Freehand by InVision vs. Zoom Workplace

Freehand has been well suited for creating process maps and getting stakeholder feedback. It has also been good for brainstorming and "freehand" board creation. Some of the templates are hard to customize for specific needs so it's sometimes better to build your own from scratch. There are a lot of navigational issues with larger boards that require zooming in/out and navigating to different sections.

Incentivized

* Onboarding new employees - adaptation is quick and easy for new employees - for phone and meeting use. * Administration is quick and easy as well as finding answers to the 'what ifs' * Delegation for scheduling and creating scheduler links - what an awesome process - delegation allows for ease of on-boarding new employees - pre-emptively setting up their meetings and orientations in advance of start date *AI summary - our development teams uses them for ALL meetings creating a great history and follow up process for the entire team

Incentivized

• Bring in and embed external files and view them on the board without having to move out of freehand. eg. pdf's, power point, youtube etc.
• Creating wireframes, flow maps, all and any kinds of created art boards to share with team members.
• Ability to create text and link to external sites
• Can format and create pages with text and bullet points right in freehand, rather than having to go to another software to do the same.
• Collaborate with Team members all on the same board and project at the same time and get feedback live in a meeting and/or even later.
• Love the different templates that have been provided for me to use as a starting point.

Incentivized

• It's a great way to connect around the world with minimal bandwidth consumption.
• Meeting our peers and exchanging ideas is made possible through the use of high-quality video and audio calls.
• Exceptional audio and video quality; we are recording meetings and transferring them to other storage.
• Compared to other apps, it has more features and allows for efficient file sharing within the chatbox.

• A method for stamping or assigning statues and approvals.
• Adding a way to have a bit more than a comment so that a client or PM could drop in a detailed product requirement to keep in mind while drawing.
• Being able to quickly build out tables for a design.
• and interactive click through a concept like the UX plugin Overflow (overflow.io).
• Use the same sharing functionality as the rest of Invision. Freehand doesn't have the same sharing method, and that's really annoying.

Incentivized

• You need an app to make the calls and meetings, but it would be perfect if it had a web-based option.
• Sometimes when internet speed drops, the audio quality also drops; I would understand the video quality dropping, but the audio doesn't consume much bandwidth, so it would be nice to have a consistent audio even on low internet speeds.

I am not in charge of the decision making on renewal or not, but my personal opinion would be to use FigJam instead as Figma is a software that we already have implemented and are familiar with. Invision would be my second choice on that topic

Incentivized

Because every other conference tool is expensive, bloated, or fails to make it easy to just have a call with someone.

Incentivized

Color Selection can be tricky when changing colors for shapes and text I've seen other users struggle with creating sticky notes and getting text to fit in the box properly and had to abandon the tool for a workshop for this reason After having a demo, I learned of new features I wasn't using. I don't know it would have been intuitive to find on my own.

Incentivized

Zoom is made for the non tech office. It has features that can be made to do what you need to run things on a day to day basis. Immediately we we able to get meetings going with remote employees. The ability to be able to add smartphone connected people was a big plus. Zoom met our needs at the time.

I think it is pretty readily available. I had some sign-in issues recently (could not log in no matter what), and my IT department created a ticket with Invision to solve it. Other than that, I have never had any issues.

Incentivized

There have been less than a handful of outages during our two years with Zoom, and whenever there was one, an email informing us of the outage went out immediately, and they had the issue resolved shortly thereafter.

InVision Freehand gets such high marks because there is no page-load lag at all. We have other applications integrated with it and we see zero lag, or drag on it's operability. We work a lot of platforms that promise smooth integrations and they don't always work that way - with inVision Freehand we know it plays well with others

Incentivized

Zoom has among the best performance of any video conference platform, as I've mentioned several times. Besides that, their Chat platform works great, and their back end always runs smooth. It's unfortunate that reporting can now only be done by one month at a time, but nonetheless, it only takes a second to run any kind of Zoom report, whether it's an attendee report, Poll results, a user report, a list of meetings from the past month, etc.

I haven't had to use the support team for anything, which is great news because that means the product usually works as expected! In terms of online support, I've been able to find videos that show how new features work. Also, many of the people I work with have experience with the tools so they are a great resource for me.

Incentivized

Because I got a response right away, and was assigned one specific individual to work with me from the beginning to the resolution. I had an actual email address and direct contact with this person without having to start over and over every time I contacted Zoom - this singular individual remained attentive and was well informed on the subject matter and quite able to resolve my needs.

Incentivized

The implementation is pretty much easy-peasy and plug-n-play. We simply download the applications and install, signed in and were good to go. I really cannot imagine that there would be anyone who would have any difficulty whatsoever in getting started in more than just a few minutes. It's really how implementing these officewide improvements should always go.

Incentivized

If you receive any pushback from higher ups, point to any of the various positive reviews like this one. Or show Zoom's excellent Gartner report, or articles describing Zoom's partnership with Sequoia capital. It's not difficult to show how Zoom is a trustworthy industry leader with best-in-class technology.

InVision Freehand is closing the gap and adding all the functionalities that some of these tools provide separately. In the race towards a one-stop digital design ecosystem, InVision Freehand is well poised to deliver and connect where others can't. I hope that with the news of Adobe acquiring Figma, InVision Freehand can continue to be a leader and pioneer in this space.

Incentivized

Zoom Workplace is typically on the more expensive end against other options, but it's the industry leader for a reason. It has the most brand credibility by far, but that doesn't mean it's perfect. There are limitations when it comes to technical performance, customization and video/audio quality. I prefer Slack myself for communication apps, but Zoom Workplace is a good alternative.

Incentivized

Not everyone in the company has access to Invision, and they can't view the links I provide to them. I also wish everyone could view a file without logging in to the enterprise account. It comes in handy when I am doing focus-group studies or other studies with our customers that don't have Freehand. Unfortunately, if that is possible, I don't know how to do that.

Incentivized

Because the Basic licenses are completely free, and because it's very easy to configure and install Zoom, and because anyone can join Zoom from a link without needing an account, scaling is a Breeze. There are absolutely no roadblocks. My company keeps adding more Zoom Pro license every week since it's so in demand. We were able to convert users from several different platforms onto Zoom with no trouble at all.

• Freehand has had a positive impact on WHO can collaborate on our designs. It's not just for designers. Anyone can pop in and contribute.
• Freehand is a great value when included within everything else InVision has to offer. Really helps to bridge the gap between the "pretty picture" (prototypes) and the "deep thinking" behind why everything is how it is.
• The only negative is that not everyone is on InVision. People use all sorts of collaboration platforms, and InVision is a bit of a barrier to entry when working with lots of people at lots of different organizations.

Incentivized

• We have not lost much productivity in our teamwork during the pandemic because of the ability to have Zoom video calls and keep everyone in touch. This is definitely a positive.
• We are able to have more people participate in coaching sessions (described earlier) because we don't have room space limitations. This is a big positive.
• Being able to start a meeting instantly is great when we are doing support and/or training with a client over the phone and need to be able to share a visible

Incentivized